Stressed female civil servants turn to the bottle

Senior women in the Civil Service are more likely to be "problem drinkers" and resort to alcohol first thing in the morning than their male colleagues, according to a study that paints an alarming picture of life in Whitehall.

The women also drink more than junior female government employees.

The findings are based on the responses of 8,000 people aged 35 to 55 working in 20 departments.

The report concludes that the stress of breaking through the "glass ceiling" in a male-dominated world has created a drink problem in Whitehall.

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One in seven senior women civil servants is defined as a "problem drinker": for example, she suffers from at least two problems associated with alcohol such as drinking alcohol in the morning and consuming so much alcohol in a week that her friends tell her to "tone it down".

Jenny Head, senior lecturer at the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, said women had to fight to reach senior positions and this made them take on male patterns of behaviour.

"Senior females also have more stress because they have to juggle home and work," she said.

"These women have moved up the ranks when equal opportunities weren't being tackled so they had to push harder to get promoted. I would hope that advances in equal opportunities would make them less likely to feel under this pressure."

Asked whether the public should be concerned that important decisions were being made by civil servants who might have a drinking problem, she said: "I don't think we should be alarmed.

"Both men and women at the top have fairly similar levels of problem drinkers, it's just more likely that females lose their 'protective' factors when they get to the top." Protective factors include the support of partners and friends.

Researchers, whose findings are published today on bmj.com, the website of the British Medical Journal, had asked civil servants about the demands of their jobs, the level of support available at work and at home, and the degree to which they could make decisions.

The prevalence of problem drinking among the men was roughly the same (10-12 per cent) whether they were clerical assistants or senior executives.

But the picture was very different for women. Women at lower grades were less likely to be problem drinkers than men in comparable grades, but they caught up with men, overtaking them at senior grades.

Ms Head said: "Problem drinking is defined as dependence on alcohol and having two or more problems such as needing a drink first thing in the morning or drinking to the extent that other people complain."

Senior female executives were more than three times as likely to be problem drinkers, at 14 per cent, as those working in the lowest clerical grades.

Among the men surveyed, putting in a lot of effort with little in the way of promotion and feeling undervalued at work were associated with problem drinking.

This finding was only partially affected by mental and physical health problems and poor quality relationships outside work. Yet high job demands combined with low levels of support did not seem to drive men to drink.

Women who put in a lot of effort with few chances of promotion were also more likely to be problem drinkers, but to a much lesser degree than men. The lack of scope for making decisions was also a factor to some extent.

Research among the general population of Britain shows that alcohol dependency affects eight to 10 per cent of men and two to four per cent of women.

A spokesman for the First Division Association, a trade union body representing Britain's 11,000 senior civil and public servants, said there had been considerable effort to increase the number of women in most senior positions.

However, there was more to be done in tackling the "culture of long hours working at senior levels of the Civil Service, which can make the work-life balance particularly hard for women with caring responsibilities".

A TUC survey last week showed that senior civil servants worked the highest number of hours of unpaid overtime of any workers in Britain.